macOS Adjusting OS X's "Save As" Window Sidebar Width

[Let's Sekuhara!]

For a very long time I have been madly irritated that the Save As window (in all of my applications) has a Sidebar that is too short to show the full names of my Sidebar custom folders.

Today I learned that this preference is not a property of Finder as one would logically assume, but instead a property that gets set on an app-by-app basis (property: "NSNavSidebarWidth" stored in .plist files). So the pixel width of the Save As window's Sidebar is a default of 120px on EVERY app.

Any ideas on how to make an AppleScript that will set it to say 180px on ALL of the applications within a user's Applications folder?
Or perhaps there is a way to change the default value system-wide?

 

[wrldwzrd89]

For a very long time I have been madly irritated that the Save As window (in all of my applications) has a Sidebar that is too short to show the full names of my Sidebar custom folders.

Today I learned that this preference is not a property of Finder as one would logically assume, but instead a property that gets set on an app-by-app basis (property: "NSNavSidebarWidth" stored in .plist files). So the pixel width of the Save As window's Sidebar is a default of 120px on EVERY app.

Any ideas on how to make an AppleScript that will set it to say 180px on ALL of the applications within a user's Applications folder?
Or perhaps there is a way to change the default value system-wide?

do shell script "defaults write com.companyname.appname NSNavSidebarWidth -int 180"

That's it! Just replace com.companyname.appname with the name of the actual plist file (without the extension).

Getting the name of the .plist file from an application is also easy, if you know its name: (using TextEdit as an example):

set appID to do shell script "defaults read /Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/Info.plist CFBundleIdentifier"

returns com.apple.TextEdit! Exactly what you need.